Pokey
by Sandy87
Summary: A short story about Sasha's shoulder guards and Ratchet's fight with them. Random ficlet. Enjoy.


A random thought the muse had. No, I hadn't finished UYA yet when I did this, but the muse was gonna kill me if I didn't write something. She is very persistant, my muse...

Anyway, this more or less deals with the oddity of Sasha's shoulder thingies. I have no clue as to their purpose (maybe to make her shoulders look wider and balance her hips?). And they look like they'd be highly uncomfortable should Ratchet attempt to lean on her shoulder. XD So, my oddball little muse gnawed on me to write something about it. Sorta a fluffy humor story, I guess is the best way to describe it. :D

Minor spoilers for UYA, of course. References to some later story events. If you've gotten to Metropolis, though, you're good. I wrote this story when I was at that point, so I can't know anything that happens later.

* * *

Ratchet put his green Mavix Fireball Pro controller down and flexed his fingers. Despite being a trained and certified Megacorp commando, the savior of two galaxies, and a mechanic who worked with his hands every day and spent countless hours mashing a trigger button on guns twice his size, his fingers really hurt. A fourteen-hour game marathon against both Sasha and Al really taxed his finger muscles. 

He took a look around himself, the first one he'd bothered to take in a couple of hours. His eyes hurt, too. Never mind the dust and explosions he endured daily; a giant screen still gave him a killer case of eye strain. Al had gone...who knew where. Probably to some computer terminal; the poor nerd couldn't stand getting beat by two "hairballs" half his size and age very many times. Despite his ability to rattle cheat codes off the top of his head, Al was rather slow in his reflexes, and the two of them had often tagteamed him - a bit unfair, but very, very fun.

Most of his quarters was green. For some reason, the color was relaxing to his eyes. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was focussing on something _besides_ the huge screen connected to his lime green VG 9000. No, it was definately the color. He liked green. He wasn't sure why, but he did. He wondered if Sasha had somehow known it, or if the color of his room was just a random thing. The thought that maybe she'd matched it to his eye color from a picture - he'd heard of girls doing that, though never payed it much attention - vaguely crossed his mind for a moment.

He cast a glance at Sasha, sitting beside him with her head thrown back in a sort of sleep. Her hands were still wrapped around her controller and twitched every once in a while, as if she were still playing, though she'd dropped off and left him to a singleplayer effort more than an hour ago. Ratchet smiled goofily; she was as easy on his eyes as the soft green hues of his room, maybe even gentler. Oh, she'd probably have given him a look if she'd been awake to catch him staring with his drooping, sleepy eyes at her for such a length of time, but Ratchet didn't care. He smiled again to himself, debating joining her in sleep and giving his eyes and fingers a rest.

Setting the controller down on the couch, he scooted over a bit closer to her. He wrapped his arms around her thin waist, reassuring himself that she wouldn't mind. After all, she hadn't done anything but laugh and excuse him when he'd attempted a half-brained proposal, and _she_ had been the one to kiss _him_, near-death experience or no. Certainly something as innocent as a hug, however prolonged, would at least be tollerated. He closed his eyes and leaned against her shoulder.

Or rather, he tried to. Something jabbed him in the side of the head. Something hard and painful. His first sleep-deprived reaction was to think that someone had somehow replaced Sasha with a large cannon and he was now leaning on its muzzle. A quick, startled look later, though, he managed to shake the silly thoughts from his mind. It was only her shoulder guard. Looking at it, it didn't seem so pokey. It was rounded and covered in the same cloth as the rest of her suit. But the underlying metal support was, apparently, quite sharp.

That wasn't so bad, though. He could just avoid leaning against it. He'd settle for merely being allowed to hold her and copy her style of sleeping with his head thrown back. That worked fairly well, except for the fact that his head now seemed lopsided and fell over against her shoulder from its own weight. Repeatedly. It was like a magnet had been implanted in his head and its polar opposite was in her shoulder.

Come to think of it, her shoulders didn't seem to like him too much at all. He'd nearly had his eye poked out by one of them when she'd moved towards him suddenly. The only thing that had saved him from blindness was his own helmet's visor. And before that, he'd gotten jabbed in the throat. Really, to his sleepy mind, they _did_ seem quite suspicious... They served no visible purpose that he could see, and they seemed quite fond of attacking him. Yes, there was something quite odd about her shoulder guards.

Well, Ratchet decided he'd just do something about those evil little things. He snarled a little and bit down on one and shook his head like a dog worrying a bone. Of course, having Sasha's body attatched made it a bit harder to shake it. It also made shaking it dangerous, since it might wake her up. Sasha could be very sweet, but she could just as easily be the most dangerous thing on the Phoenix, himself and Helga's meatloaf included.

Sasha did wake up, but not in the furious rage Ratchet feared. Rather, she just blinked sleepy and looked at him. "Ratchet? What are you doing?"

Ratchet loosened his grip on her. "I was, ah..." He pulled away and sat with his shoulders hunched, looking at her sheepishly. "Well..." She pursed her lips and frowned; Ratchet took it as a cue to hurry up and say _something_, even if it was rediculous. So he managed to tumble out, "YourshoulderguardsareevilandtryingtokillmesoIwasgonnakillthemfirst!"

She lowered her eyebrows, creased her forehead and squinted in confusion. Being half-asleep didn't help her figure out what he said at such a breakneck pace. She couldn't quite figure it out, so she dismissed it as something he'd done in the half-sleep state he must've been in. After all, he looked every bit as tired as she felt. "Silly Ratchet," she smiled and shook her head slightly, then placed her arm around his shoulders. She cushioned her head from _his_ shoulder guard using her hand and leaned against him.

He smiled again, broader this time. That had worked out better than he'd planned! Now, not only was he not being poked by an evil bit of metal, but he didn't have to pay to have her suit repaired - something he hadn't quite considered before attempting to bite it - _and_ he knew for certain that at least she wasn't _totally_ against cuddling with him, at least when she was too tired to think straight. He leaned against the top of her head and wrapped his arms arond her waist again. Yes, the top of her head was certainly more comfortable than her shoulder, so long as she wore those shoulder guards.

Or at least, it _was_ more comfortable. Until her metal headband poked him in the nose...


End file.
